Samar Issa, Ph.D., assistant professor of business administration at the Frank J. Guarini School of Business at Saint Peter’s University, always had an interest in understanding why the 2008 financial crisis happened. To answer this question, she examined all of the financial metrics for 89 corporations across six leading industries including technology, financial, pharmaceutical, auto, airline and energy. She invested two years into preparing a paper, which reviewed two decades worth of data since 2000.
John E. Hammett III, Ed.D., associate dean and director of the M.B.A. program; and Samar Issa, Ph.D., assistant professor of business administration at the Frank J. Guarini School of Business at Saint Peter’s University, at the Bright Idea Award ceremony.
The paper, titled Optimal corporate leverage and speculative cycles: An empirical estimation, ultimately determined that borrowing is not a bad thing, but excess leverage can put the economy in a state of instability. The paper also established a model that calculates an optimal debt level. Her research also revealed that the United States was at the edge of another crisis, but COVID stimulus packages saved many of the big corporations that she was researching.
Dr. Issa’s manuscript was quickly noticed by the wider business community and was published in a top-leading, high-impact journal titled Structural Change in Economic Dynamics. However its impact did not stop there. The paper was also published in the 22nd annual volume of the Publications of New Jersey Business Faculty, which is produced by the Stillman School of Business at Seton Hall University. A total of 114 papers were submitted for the publication and Dr. Issa’s was one of the top ten manuscripts selected to receive a “Bright Idea Award.” The Bright Idea Award is given to intellectual contributions that have the greatest impact on business practice and/or advance knowledge in the discipline.
In a letter to Dr. Issa, Joyce Strawser, Ph.D., dean of the Stillman School of Business shared, “We are so proud of your work and the intellectual capital that resides within our great State!”
Beyond Dr. Issa’s innovative research, she teaches courses at Saint Peter’s at the undergraduate and graduate level in finance, economics, business analytics, leadership, project management and more. She also is the director of the Center for Leadership Studies and the former founding advisor for the Student Managed Investment Fund and the Chartered Financial Analyst Research Challenge.